PLACE NAMES: Playmor Junction

ABOVE: Many businesses have adopted the name Playmor over the years. BELOW: An ad for Playmor Hall from the Nelson Daily News of Aug. 31

One hundred fifty-second in an alphabetical series on West Kootenay/Boundary place names

Playmor Junction, at the intersection of Highway 6 and 3A, is one of the more recent additions to local toponymy, dating to 1968.

It takes its name from Playmor Hall, a dance venue first mentioned in the Nelson Daily News of May 10, 1941: “Attention dance fans: Reserve May 23 and 24 for the gala opening dances at Alex Powell’s new large ‘Playmor’ now under construction near South Slocan.”

Alex Powell was a professional dancer and taught ballroom and exhibition dancing classes before he and wife Laura built Playmor Hall.

Between May and October, dances were held nearly every Saturday, and sometimes Fridays, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. On holiday Mondays, Playmor would host “mid-nite frolics” from 12 to 3:30 a.m.

The entertainment was a combination of local acts and — thanks to Powell’s contacts in the US — touring bands. The list of notable names who performed there is long, but included Bobby Curtola, Bobby Vinton, Buddy Knox, Dal Richards, and Gene Pitney.

On April 6, 1946 the hall burned down, but the following year the Powells re-built on the same site.

Alex Powell’s death in 1967 of a rare form of bone cancer ended Playmor Hall’s golden era. It was later used as a furniture warehouse and bingo hall and today it’s Covenant Church at the Junction.

The name’s origin is no more complicated than a compound of play and more, minus the last letter.

Frequently misspelled Playmore, or even Playmour, the name has since been given to the road that goes by the hall and adopted by several businesses, including Playmor Storage, Playmor Woodworks, and Playmor Power Products.

It has also been used elsewhere in many other ways, sometime spelled Play-Mor or Pla-Mor, from a 1920s music store in Florida to a 1940s Kansas City hockey team, to present-day product names for RVs and swing sets. There’s even another Playmor Hall in San Antonio, Tex. Lastly, and very appropriately, a local big band calls itself Playmor Junction.

The first use of Playmor Junction was in a Nelson Daily News ad of Nov. 29, 1968 for Parkwood Trailer Sales (later known as Playmor Mobile Homes). Proprietors Walt and Val Hill probably coined it.

In 1986, the BC geographic names office officially recognized Playmor Junction as a community. It’s now used interchangeably with South Slocan, which we’ll look at separately in this series.